CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1304
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Ron Loewinsohn and Robert Hogg at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 20 February 1970
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"RON LOEWINSOHN I086-11-033" written on stickers on the spine of the tape box and on the reel. "RT 526" written on the back and on sticker on the front of the tape box.
"ROBERT HOGG I086-11-023" written on stickers on the spine of the tape box and on the reel. "RT 534" written on the back and on sticker on the front of the tape box.
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[I086-11-033, I086-11-023]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Loewinsohn, Ron
Dates:
1937-2014
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Ron Loewinsohn was born in Iloilo, Philippines on December 15, 1937. His family moved to California in 1945, and he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1955 in San Francisco. Loewinsohn spent two years traveling the United States before marrying in 1957 and taking up a position as a lithographer that he held for the next twelve years. He completed an M.A. in 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley, and then an M.A. (1969) and Ph.D. (1971) from Harvard University, completing his doctoral dissertation on William Carlos Williams. He edited Sum magazine in 1974 with Canadian poet Fred Wah. Ron Loewinsohn became close friends with poets Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and Charles Olson. His first collection of poems, Watermelons (Totem Press) was published in 1959 with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg, and a prefatory letter by Williams himself. The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 (Grove Press, 1960) anthologized Loewinsohn’s poetry and propelled him into popularity. His next collections, The World of the Lie (Change Press, 1963) which won a Poets Foundation Award, Against the Silences to Come (Four Seasons Foundation, 1965) and L’Autre (Black Sparrow Press, 1967) placed him securely in the Beat poetry movement. Loewinsohn published two collections of poetry in 1967, Lying Together, Turning the Head and Shifting the Weight, The Produce District and Other Places, Moving: A Spring Poem (Black Sparrow Press) and Three Backyard Dramas with Mamas (Unicorn Press), followed by The Sea, Around Us, and The Step in 1968 (both Black Sparrow Press). He collaborated with Diane Wakoski and Robert Kelly in 1968, publishing These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony (Black Sparrow Press). He won an Irving Stone Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1966, the University of California Scholar Award in 1967, a Woodrow Wilson Foundation graduate fellowship from 1967-8, a Harvard University fellowship from 1967-70, a National Education Association Fellowship in 1979 and 1986, and a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1984-5. Ron Loewinsohn began a career in teaching that spanned for more than thirty years at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970. His later works include Meat Air 1957-69 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970), followed by The Leaves (Black Sparrow Press, 1973) and Eight Fairy Tales (Black Sparrow Press, 1975) and his last volume of poetry, Goat Dances: Poems and Prose (Black Sparrow Press, 1976). Loewinsohn’s work has beeny anthologized in dozens of publications, including The Post Moderns: A New American Poetry Revised (1982), and published in periodicals including Poetry, Tri-Quarterly, Chicago Review and Occident. Loewinsohn authored two novels, Magnetic Fields (Knopf, 1983), and Where All the Ladders Start (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987). Ron Loewinsohn retired from the University of California, Berkeley as professor emeritus in 2005. Loewinsohn died in 2014 at the age of 76.
Name:
Hogg, Robert
Dates:
1942-
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1942. His father was an accountant and his mother founded the Canadian Health League in 1948, and opened the first health food store in the Fraser Valley. After hearing Robert Duncan read from The Opening of the Field, in Vancouver with Frank Davey, he completed a BA at the University of British Columbia. There, he met the members of the newly formed Tish group, and became an integral part of the movement. George Bowering and Hogg published Robert Duncan: An Interview by George Bowering and Robert Hogg (Coach House Press, 1971), which was conducted in 1969. Hogg then went on to complete a Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo in American Literature. Hogg and his family moved to Ottawa and bought a farm in Mountain Township and began organic farming. In 1968 Hogg began teaching Modern Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa until he retired in 2005. Hogg’s published works include The connexions (Oyez Press, 1966), Standing back (Coach House Press, 1971), Of light (Coach House Press, 1978), Heat lightning (Black Moss Press, 1986), There is no falling (ECW Press, 1993) and most recently Hogg edited An English Canadian poetics (Talon Books, 2009) which he won a Marston Lafrance Research Fellowship award to write.
CONTRIBUTORS
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Playback Mode:
Mono
Sound Quality:
Good
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Playback Mode:
Mono
Sound Quality:
Good
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:43:00
Size:
103.2 MB
Content:
ron_loewinsohn-i086-11-033.mp3 [File 1 of 2]
Ron Loewinsohn
00:00:00
I do want to try to read as much as I can from the more recent material, the book is called Meat Air, and the last section which is the collection of new stuff is called “Book of Ayres”. Let me start out with, let me start out with one called "His Music's Like His 20 Children".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:00:30
Reads "His Music's Like His 20 Children" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:01:54
Reads ["It Is to Be Bathed in Light" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:04:25
This is called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:04:30
Reads "Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969, section “L’autre 1967”].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:05:10
And this one called, "The Rain, The Rain".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:05:17
Reads "The Rain, The Rain" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:06:20
Let me, let me do one called "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title". That title had to be changed, it was originally "Fuck You Roger Maris
", but Harcourt Brace
didn't want to be sued. It's not as if I can't afford it, it's just that it wouldn't do anybody any good. So this is "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:07:04
Reads "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:07:41
The quote "thoughts of the party were in my head" is from the World Champion Weight Lifter, who is a Communist Chinese, and after he had pressed some 5,000 lbs or something they said, you know "You're fantastic, how did you do it?". And he said "Thoughts of the party were in my head". This is called "Vision of Childhood''.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:08:15
Reads "Vision of Childhood" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:10:33
This is called "Lots of Lakes".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:10:37
Reads "Lots of Lakes" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:12:03
This is called "The Sea, Around Us".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:12:17
Reads "The Sea, Around Us" [from The Sea, Around Us].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:15:59
I want to read some, most of the poems from this section called "Book of Ayres", and I want to explain just a little bit about it if I can, I guess the most important thing to say is that they declared themselves as a book of poems, in the middle of a final exam, I was taking an exam and one of the things that we had to deal with was a poem by Emily Dickinson
, which I will read to you, it's a marvelous poem, I'd never seen it before. And it's so clearly tied all of the poems I'd been working on for the past year or so together, into a bundle, into a package. Let me read to you the, this little statement which I'd written for the publication of the book, and I, simply to insist that they are before anything else, religious poems, and I, as prepossessing as I am about them now, because I think that I may have occasion later on in the reading to call that, or you may have occasion to call that to mind. That they take, as their focus, the making, the finding of the flesh in the word, that is that the word is flesh and it has to be found as such. But let me just read this statement and then I'll read you the Emily Dickinson poem, we'll go right into the “Book of Ayres”. I hope that they're, also, that they're fun, and then you say 'religion', people say, 'uh-oh', this is going to be very grim and very heavy, and in the old sense of heavy. But I hope we can have fun with them, but simply, let me do this. All the poems in the “Book of Ayres” section Meat Air, were written with the intention, though not entirely conscious ‘til rather late in the series, of making the word flesh. That is, when the poet speaks, his words are physically only air, yet they can afford us the most sensorially tangible of experiences. Further, the poem, though merely air, is what sustains us, what the soul feeds on. The poet speaks to keep the soul of man alive, that's Yeats
in “John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore”, it's interesting that as I was grabbing for something to, for support, picked that line, because the line continues, or rather the whole passage goes "And oh, but she had stories, though not for the priest's ear, to keep the soul of man alive, to banish age and care, and being old, she put a skin on everything she said." Or as Williams
puts it, "It is difficult, to get the news from poems, yet we die, every day, for lack of what is found there." Yet if the word seeks to take on the actuality of flesh, of substance, substance itself, as the poet apprehends it, in the merest of tales of his life, from day to day, seeks to take on the resonating actuality of speech, to realize itself in the actuality of the word. Love itself is both a word and a continuing act or process, both an idea and a tension in the chest, viscera and genitals, a pressure toward articulation so complex that it often stifles speech. About halfway through “The Book of Ayres”, I realized that many of the poems I'd written over the past twelve years or so, had been attempting with various degrees of success to effect these transubstantiations and so, this collection. "The Dickinson Poem", which if you want to take a look at it is in Thomas Johnson's editions, it's number “1651”.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:20:02
Reads "Poem 1651" by Emily Dickinson.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:20:49
And one last note before starting in the book has an epigraph from Jim St. Jim. "I need to take a new tack, and sit on it." The first poem's called "’These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony’".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:21:11
Reads "’These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony’" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Unknown
00:21:20
Ambient Sound [bell].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:21:22
What the hell is that? I have this terrible recollection of this story I heard about a college in the Midwest in the United States
where a visiting prof came out to give a lecture on Plato
or something and had this bell go off every fifteen minutes and after, it really unnerved him, and after the end of the lecture, he asked one of the people, like, "What is that bell going off?" and the guy, the administrator said "Oh, that's to keep the students awake." I--If that's the case, God bless you, I hope we can do better than that.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:22:08
Reads "These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:23:34
And this is called "The Sipapu". Don't worry about the title, it clears up.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:23:52
Reads "The Sipapu" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:27:51
This is called "Settling".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:27:58
Reads "Settling" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:29:48
This is called, this next poem is called "Paean" p-a-e-a-n, paean, and is a collaboration in a sense that it's the kind of poem in which a number of people get together and contribute lines, you give me three lines, and I'll give you two lines and eventually the poem gets written, and simply to give credit where credit where credit is due, to list the people who did contribute or help out in the writing of this poem, John Dryden
, William Carlos Williams, and the Associated Press
.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:30:31
Reads "Paean" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:12
The story goes that St. Cecilia
invented the organ, and when she was playing an angel passed and mistook earth for heaven because of this fantastic music. "Went to her organ vocal breath was given" says John Dryden. These are a couple of songs.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:38
Reads “Song” [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; third poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:48
This one also called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:54
Reads “Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; fourth poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:12
And this one also called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:18
Reads “Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; fifth poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:57
And this one called "Air".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:34:01
Reads "Air" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:34:59
And this one called "Goat Dance".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:35:07
Reads "Goat Dance" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; first poem entitled “Goat Dance” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:36:30
This one called "Two Airs".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:36:36
Reads "Two Airs" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:37:31
And another one called "Goat Dance".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:37:35
Reads "Goat Dance" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; third poem entitled “Goat Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:38:48
And this, title, may perhaps need a little bit of explanation. "The Romaunt of the Rose", a 13th century French dream vision poem, dream allegory, written actually in two halves by Jean de Meun
and Guillaume de Lorris
I'm not sure but Chaucer
translated the first part of it, and the title comes from his title, "The Romaunt of the Rose". The last line of the poem, “smoot right to the herte rote” is from Chaucer's translation and it's "smitten right to the heart's root". And the whole, the title of the poem is "The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:39:39
Reads "The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:40:22
I'll just do two more, the first one called "K. 282". Koechel is--don't please, be insulted that I explain that title, I read the poem in New York
and a graduate student at Columbia
asked me if it meant "Circa 282", like circa 282, like approximately 282, and it is of course the catalogue number for the Mozart
piano sonata, and it's a piano sonata, I forget which, what key it's in.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:41:04
Reads "K. 282" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:42:02
And the last poem is the title poem of the book, "Meat Air".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:42:08
Reads "Meat Air" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969.
END
00:43:00
Notes:
Ron Loewinsohn reads from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970).
00:00- Ron Loewinsohn introduces “His Music’s Like His Twenty Children” [INDEX: Meat Air by Ron Loewinsohn, published by Harcourt Brace]
00:30- Reads “His Music’s Like His Twenty Children”
01:54- Reads “It Is to Be Bathed in Light”
04:25- Reads “Song”
05:20- Reads “The Rain, The Rain”
06:20- Introduces “Fuck You With Your Home Run Title” [INDEX: Roger Maris: baseball player]
07:04- Reads “Fuck You With Your Home Run Title”
07:41- Explains a line from “Fuck You With Your Home Run Title” [INDEX: Communist Chinese World Champion Weight Lifter]
08:15- Reads “Vision of Childhood”
10:33- Reads “Lots of Lakes”
12:03- Reads “The Sea Around Us”
15:59- Introduces section “Book of Ayres” and Emily Dickinson Poem, “Number 1651” [INDEX: “Book of Ayres” section in Meat Air, Emily Dickinson Poem from Thomas Johnson’s Collection #1651, Yeats’ poem “John Kinsella’s Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore”, William Carlos Williams quote, religious poetry: words are flesh, epigraph from Jim St. Jim [sp?]]
20:02- Reads “1651” by Emily Dickinson
20:49- Introduces epigraph in Meat Air
21:11- Reads “These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony”
21:22- Interrupted [INDEX: Mid-Western United States]
22:08- Re-starts “These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony”
23:34- Reads “The Sipapu” [INDEX: South Western Native American Tradition]
27:51- Reads “Settling”
28:48- Introduces “Paean” [INDEX: Collaborative poem: John Dryden, William Carlos Williams and the Associated Press]
30:31- Reads “Paean”
32:12- Explains “Paean” [INDEX: St. Cecilia invented Organ]
32:38- Reads “Song: I think of you through a pain in my throat...”
32:48- Reads “Song: Like two apples in a tree...”
33:12- Reads “Song: If there is nothing but the rhythm of tears...”
33:57- Reads “Air”
34:59- Reads “Goat Dance: You inspire me...”
36:30- Reads “Two Airs”
37:31- Reads “Goat Dance: 1. In the middle of the park...”
38:48- Introduces “The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck” [INDEX: 13th century French Dream allegory poetry: by Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Lorris, translated by Chaucer into “The Romaunt of the Rose”]
39:39- Reads “The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck”
40:22- Introduces “K. 282” [INDEX: Koechel: Mozart piano sonata k. 282]
41:04- Reads “K. 282”
42:02- Reads “Meat Air”
43:00.20- END OF RECORDING
From the Howard Fink List of poems:
*Two separate and different typed pages in print sources...
PAGE 1)
Feb 20, 1970
5”, mono, single track, reel, @ 3 3/4 ips; lasting 50 mins.
1. “His Music is Like His Twenty Children”
2. “Song” first line: “Oh her lips swell...”
3. “The Rain, The Rain”
4. “Fuck You With Your Home-run Title”
5. “Vision of Childhood”
6. “Lots of Lakes”
7. “The Sea Around Us”
8. “A poem by E. Dickenson”
9. first line: “Angelic spirits in a winter sky...”
10. first line: “But originally the real world...”
11. “Settling”
12. “Paean”
13. “Song” first line “I think of you through a pain...”
14. “Song” first line “Like two apples in a tree...”
15. “Song” first line “If there is nothing...”
16. “Air”
17. “Goat Dance” first line “You inspire me...”
18. “Two Airs”
19. “Goat Dance” first line “In the middle of the park...”
20. first line “In it’s tower of bone...”
21. first line “In the fullness...”
22. “Meat Air”
Discrepancies on page 2)
2. It is To Be Bathed In Light
3. Song
4. The Rain, The Rain
5. Fuck You With Your Home-Run Title
6. Vision of Childhood
7. Lots of Lakes
8. The Sea Around Us
9. These Worlds Have Always Moved In Harmony
10. The Cee-pah-pooh (Where The Spirit Dwells)
11. Settling
12. Paean
13. I Think Of You With A Pain In My Throat
14. Song
15. Song
16. Air
17. Goat Dance
18.Two Airs
19. Goat Dance
20.The Ro-- Of The Rose
21. Kercshal 282
22. Meat Air
Content Type:
Sound Recording
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:40:42
Size:
97.7 MB
Content:
robert_hogg_i086-11-023.mp3 [File 2 of 2]
Robert Hogg
00:00:00
I'd like to open the reading with a poem that's really part of a verse-play that I wrote in 1963 or 64, a long time ago, a play that never really made it as a play, but fragments of which I've salvaged because I like, I like what they do. And so this is sort of called "Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play", and this is the dream that one of the figures has.
Robert Hogg
00:00:26
Reads "Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play - Walkie's Dream".
Robert Hogg
00:02:39
I'd like to read a few selections from my book of poems The Connexions, which was printed in 1965. I'd like to begin with a poem entitled "The Command". I should just briefly mention that these poems were all written in a very short period of time between November and January, mostly, and a few poems written later on throughout that spring of 1965. That is, November 1964 through the early part of 1965. Most of them were written in New York and involved an experience I had there where I was very ill, and part of the time delirious. This poem was actually written a little later than some of the poems that follow. They're not spaced out chronologically in the book. "The Command".
Robert Hogg
00:03:34
Reads "The Command" from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:06:20
This poem, written, actually, previous to the other, is entitled "Eclipse", and it was written without my own, without my knowledge, actually, at the time, that there was an eclipse taking place. It was on the eighteenth of December, 1964, written in New York City. This was a lunar eclipse. Isn't there a lunar eclipse about to...is that tonight? [Audience laughter]. It's a full moon tonight. Something's happening.
Robert Hogg
00:07:06
Reads "Eclipse" from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:09:12
The she of that last stanza enters into this poem, which was originally entitled "The Changing of Skin". There's a good, considerable amount of snake imagery in these poems, all of which was the result of having hepatitis and the turning of colours. I had hepatitis rather badly, and relapsed twice with it, and each time I relapsed, of course, I turned bright yellow again. And it was quite an unusual experience, especially the first time, in which I was in the hospital, and the nurses, especially the young nurses, would come round and look at you with the most peculiar eyes, you know, as if you were really something from another world, having changed colour like that.
Robert Hogg
00:10:02
Reads unnamed poem [originally entitled “The Changing of Skin”].
Robert Hogg
00:14:08
Another poem connected with this quite closely, another dream poem, entitled "The Cave".
Robert Hogg
00:14:17
Reads "The Cave".
Robert Hogg
00:15:36
After this there's a descent, a further descent down, as has been instructed in an earlier poem, called "The Command," and then a coming-out again. And then a poem that remembers, really, it's quite different, I'm not sure how much this poem really belonged in The Connexions. Most of the poems definitely did belong in the book, I think, though some of them don't bear reading, I don't think, now. This poem bears reading, I think, but doesn't really belong in the book. How's that?
Robert Hogg
00:16:09
Reads unnamed poem from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:16:55
And another poem, which was originally titled, "Poem to Out of This World and Soul Lies", was really written with John Sinclair
in mind, whom I hope all of you keep in mind at times, specially now that he's in prison, in Michigan
. It was written to...not written really for him, but written with him in mind, listening to the record "Out of This World and Soul Lies" by John Coltrane
.
Robert Hogg
00:17:23
Reads ["Out of This World" , originally entitled “Poem to Out of This World and Soul Lies”].
Robert Hogg
00:19:09
And the last poem in the collection is entitled, simply, "Song".
Robert Hogg
00:19:16
Reads "Song" from The Connexions.
Unknown
00:19:33
Ambient Sound [bell].
Robert Hogg
00:19:34
Have to change my trunks...Now I'd like to read a few poems that were written not too far removed from the time of The Connexions, some of them, and then moving right on up to the present. This poem titled simply, "Once" and the "once" is really part of the poem.
Robert Hogg
00:20:01
Reads "Once" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:20:24
And another little poem called "Tropos", which means, "to turn" in Greek, or "turning" in Greek.
Robert Hogg
00:20:34
Reads "Tropos".
Robert Hogg
00:20:50
Another short poem, written some time later, but in the same vein. "A Fragment of Love".
Robert Hogg
00:20:57
Reads "A Fragment of Love".
Robert Hogg
00:21:12
This poem was written about four or five years ago also, and was written after having given a tarot reading for a friend. And I take it that most of you will have some familiarity with the tarot cards, and anyway, the poem attempts in several places to explain, in other places just simply to give you the reading of the tarot as it was done out. And so I've just simply in parts just listed the cards that fell. It's simply called "A Reading".
Robert Hogg
00:21:48
Reads "A Reading".
Robert Hogg
00:24:03
And now, a longer poem, a poem that really, in a sense, deals with the subject of poetry, and the subject of love, together. The poem is entitled "Aries and Pisces Dream". And really, I supposed, ought to be dedicated to Charles Olson
.
Robert Hogg
00:24:30
Reads "Aries and Pisces Dream" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:29:03
A short, and rather lyrical poem, which was written in response to a letter, not in very good response to a letter, actually...in which the other person asked me if I wouldn't tell them about Psyche
, what I've defined psyche, which I found was an absolutely impossible thing to do, and something that I hope I can--you could--you know, once you spend one's whole life, I suppose, trying to do it, God help you if you actually get it done, you know. There'd be nothing left to do. This poem is called "Of Psyche".
Robert Hogg
00:29:39
Reads "Of Psyche" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:30:26
A recent poem, entitled "To the Moon". The moon gets into a lot of my poems, one way or another. This one woke us up the other night, rather nastily.
Robert Hogg
00:30:37
Reads "To the Moon".
Robert Hogg
00:31:12
This is an untitled poem, a happy poem, I hope, written in September, on the seventh of September, and it struck me, as it was the seventh of September, that in fact, in the Latin, that September is the seventh month, and was apparently the seventh month of the Roman calendar year. And so I was suddenly taken by that, because, you know, if you write dates very often, you probably use the typical numerical method of you know, putting, the day, and the month, and the year, in terms of numbers. And you usually think of September as the ninth month, which in fact it is, in our calendar, but the word is obviously, suggests, as October suggests the eighth month, September is the seventh. And so I was happy. It seemed like something new was happening. It was nice, because you know, in September, in northern, any part of Ottawa
, Ottawa-area, or Ontario
, or Quebec
, you know what's coming, eh? You know, it's still here. So you got to be happy while you can. And it was also, I should add, that even in old times, you know, the calendar year was divided into twelve months, and so the seventh month would, in a sense, be the beginning of a new cycle. It would be six months, and that would end the first half, and there would be six more months, and September would be the first of it again. And that also excited me. It felt like Spring. [Laughter]. But I'm crazy.
Robert Hogg
00:32:42
Reads untitled poem [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:33:05
And now a sad poem, for someone who has, who had cancer, and is apparently alright, which is kind of nice. I think I was pessimistic, I'm always terribly pessimistic about something like that, I don't find it easy to be optimistic in such situations, and optimism, the optimism that I now have again for this person is only as qualified, I dare say. The poem is entitled "A Lifetime", and the more I thought about that word--I didn't get the title easily, I had to work it out--and the more I thought about that word, the more it began to mean to me. I think if you really think about that word, lifetime, as one word, it's very peculiar. And then I thought, I was thinking about time-life [audience laughter]. And that really, that was really funny. It's strange, isn't it, that those, that, that corporation should own those two words, as they do. It's very difficult to use them. We can't just call it--like, can you imagine putting out a magazine called Life? You know. Or Poetry magazine. These are very good names for a magazine. Or Time, you know. That's pretty big stuff! [Audience laughter]. What could they--and look what they've done with it, you know. So reduction is still possible [Laughter]. "A Lifetime"...And one other thing [laughter] before I begin this one, it's not altogether this way, you've probably, you know, you've probably found that my lines, my poetry, has a tendency, especially in the earlier poems, to be, like they say, poetic, you know, to try to be a little, to try to sound pretty. It was something that meant a great deal to me earlier, and means a little less to me now than it did then, though beauty still means as much to me as ever. I have tried, I have looked for in my poetry--and one thing, it was very pleasant hearing Ron's
poems tonight, is a quality of voice, a quality of language, that doesn't necessarily try to be pretty at all--that tries to use the language that we are actually living with. I don't mean to try to talk about the old problems of prose and poetry, or anything of the kind. But just that, language needn't necessarily be quote, poetic, unquote. We had kind of a talk about that last night, at the reading in Ottawa, it was pretty funny. And this poem, just at least its beginning, it has that colloquialism that I enjoy.
Robert Hogg
00:35:37
Reads "A Lifetime".
Robert Hogg
00:37:03
And the last poem that I'd like to read is a poem that is really a freak poem. This poem has taken me at least two years to write, a little longer than two years to write, I think, and has been written over and over and over and over again, and like I said about time/life, this one has also suffered a phenomenal reduction, starting out as about six pages and ending up as three, which is usually a good sign. Originally there was a line in the poem, something about the presages of civilization, you know, are on my back or in my ear, or something like that, and it was a horrible line. Like a lot of the other lines it had to be excised, and rewritten, and so forth. But the thought of it, the thought of that word, the meaning of that word, contained, lived with me, and lived with my sense of the poem. And so I've entitled it simply, "Presages". And also, to make it a little more comprehensible, I've put a sort of bracket, subtitle, "From a Sixth-Floor Apartment". Actually, the poem was begun in Manhattan
, not in Manhattan, I'm sorry, in Queens
, New York, when I was staying at my in-laws' house a little over two years ago, just briefly, and was written from their sixth-floor apartment. It actually, the strange thing about this poem is it was mostly written since then, really re-written, although the first part is pretty much as it was originally.
Robert Hogg
00:38:24
Reads "Presages: From a Sixth-Floor Apartment" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:40:40
Thank you.
END
00:40:42
[Cut off abruptly].
Notes:
Robert Hogg reads from The Connexions (Oyez Press, 1966), as well as poems later published in Standing Back (Coach House Press, 1972), and others from unknown sources.
00:00- Robert Hogg introduces reading and “Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play”. [INDEX: poem, verse-play, written in 1963-4, fragments, dream.]
00:26- Reads “Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play: Walkie’s Dream”. [INDEX: morning, wake, sleep, dream, water, sun, east, sea, swim, day, glass, window.]
02:39- Introduces “The Command”. [INDEX: selections from The Connexions, printed in 1965, written between November and January, spring of 1965, New York, ill, delirious, not chronological order.]
03:34- Reads “The Command”. [INDEX: snow, winter, unsaid, city, ice, wind, young, death, Erie, Great Lakes, place, New York, body, water, disease, sun, land, earth, memory, remembrance, mind, season, Eden, journey, snake.]
06:20- Introduces “Eclipse”. [INDEX: lunar eclipse, December 18, 1964, New York City, full moon the night of this reading.]
07:06- Reads “Eclipse” [INDEX: earth, moon, fire, oracle, snake, body, naked, queen, sex, sperm, woman.]
09:12- Introduces unknown poem, first line “So it is empty, but for the animals...”. [INDEX: female from “Eclipse”, original title “The Changing of Skin”, snake imagery, hepatitis, relapsed, hospital, nurses.]
10:02- Reads unknown poem, first line “So it is empty, but for the animal...” [INDEX: New Testament, Judaism, Jew, Moses, Jesus, crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, vision, name, night, disease, illness, violence, snake, child, sex, mythology.]
14:08- Introduces “The Cave”. [INDEX: dream poem.]
14:17- Reads “The Cave”. [INDEX: child, cave, winter, day.]
15:36- Introduces unknown poem, first line “This much is remembered...”. [INDEX: descent down, “The Command”, memory, relevance in collection.]
16:09- Reads unknown poem, first line “This much is remembered...” [INDEX: memory, remembrance, sea, man, land]
16:55- Introduces “Out of This World”. [INDEX: originally titled, “Poem to Out of This World and Soul Lies” written with John Sinclair, prison, Michigan, record “Out of this World and Soul Lies” by John Coltrane.]
17:23- Reads “Out of This World”. [INDEX: beginning, origin, eternity, birth, egg, snake, woman, sex]
19:09- Introduces “Song” [INDEX: last poem in the collection]
19:16- Reads “Song”. [INDEX: sun, wind, tree, nature, bird, air, voice]
19:34- Introduces “Once”. [INDEX: poems written same time as The Connexions up to the present]
20:01- Reads “Once”. [INDEX: poem, poet, poetry, love, line]
20:24- Introduces “Tropos”. [INDEX: Greek for ‘to turn’ or ‘turning’]
20:34- Reads “Tropos”. [INDEX: turning, couple, sight, beauty]
20:50- Introduces “A Fragment of Love”. [INDEX: short poem, same vein as “Tropos”]
20:57- Reads “A Fragment of Love”. [INDEX: winter, seasons, woman, nature]
21:12- Introduces “A Reading”. [INDEX: written 4-5 years previous, tarot reading, friend, explain, cards.]
21:48- Reads “A Reading”. [INDEX: tarot, reading, fate, lover, magician, mother, father, night, child, blood, French, woman, friend, death, moon, sea, justice, sun, bilingual]
24:03- Introduces “Aries and Pisces Dream”. [INDEX: poetry, love, dedicated to Charles Olson.]
24:30- Reads “Aries and Pisces Dream”. [INDEX: night, woman, awake, love, space, Charles Olson, moon, sun, earth, real, distance, bird, sleep, dance, word, world, measure, death]
29:03- Introduces “Of Psyche”. [INDEX: short, lyrical poem, response to a letter, Psyche, definition of Psyche.]
29:39- Reads “Of Psyche”. [INDEX: love, spring, Psyche, woman, man, beauty, window, morning, dance.]
30:26- Introduces “To the Moon”. [INDEX: poems, moon, night.]
30:37- Reads “To the Moon”. [INDEX: moon, face, pain, woman, mother, light, night, laugh.]
31:12- Introduces Untitled Poem, first line “Fresh September...” [INDEX: written September 7th, Latin, Roman Calendar, numerical method of dates, October, Ottawa, Ontario, Quebec, happy, twelve months, new cycle, Spring.]
32:42- Reads Untitled Poem, first line “Fresh September...” [INDEX: nature, seasons, winter, spring, bird, sun, September]
33:05- Introduces “A Lifetime”. [INDEX: friend who had cancer, pessimistic, optimism, time, life, Life magazine, Poetry magazine, reduction, lines, beauty, Ron [Loewinsohn], quality of voice, quality of language, unpoetic language, Ottawa, colloquialism.]
35:37- Reads “A Lifetime”. [INDEX: idea, giving, time, rain, cancer, nothing, disease, death, dying, rose, tulip, growth, dark, waiting, silence.]
37:03- Introduces “Presages: From a Sixth-Floor Apartment”. [INDEX: freak poem, taken over two years to write, time, life, reduction of the text, six pages to three, original line in poem, presages of civilization, horrible line, rewriting, title, sub-title, begun in Queens New York, first part is original.]
38:24- Reads “Presages: From a Sixth-Floor Apartment”. [INDEX: city, New York, distance, apartment, earth, death, air, body, dream, river, sea, mind, time, soul, property, civilization, blood, fire, fish, Psyche, beach]
40:40- Robert Hogg thanks the audience.
40:42.66- END OF RECORDING.
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Title:
Robert Hogg Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Robert Hogg Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Robert Hogg Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Robert Hogg Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Ron Loewinsohn Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Ron Loewinsohn Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Ron Loewinsohn Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Ron Loewinsohn Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1970 2 20
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Supplemental Material
Notes:
Date reference in "Howard Fink List"
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Mixed Lounge (H-651)
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location referenced by previous researcher
CONTENT
Contents:
ron_loewinsohn-i086-11-033.mp3 [File 1 of 2]
Ron Loewinsohn
00:00:00
I do want to try to read as much as I can from the more recent material, the book is called Meat Air, and the last section which is the collection of new stuff is called “Book of Ayres”. Let me start out with, let me start out with one called "His Music's Like His 20 Children".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:00:30
Reads "His Music's Like His 20 Children" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:01:54
Reads ["It Is to Be Bathed in Light" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:04:25
This is called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:04:30
Reads "Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969, section “L’autre 1967”].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:05:10
And this one called, "The Rain, The Rain".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:05:17
Reads "The Rain, The Rain" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:06:20
Let me, let me do one called "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title". That title had to be changed, it was originally "Fuck You Roger Maris
", but Harcourt Brace
didn't want to be sued. It's not as if I can't afford it, it's just that it wouldn't do anybody any good. So this is "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:07:04
Reads "Fuck You With Your Home Run Title" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:07:41
The quote "thoughts of the party were in my head" is from the World Champion Weight Lifter, who is a Communist Chinese, and after he had pressed some 5,000 lbs or something they said, you know "You're fantastic, how did you do it?". And he said "Thoughts of the party were in my head". This is called "Vision of Childhood''.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:08:15
Reads "Vision of Childhood" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:10:33
This is called "Lots of Lakes".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:10:37
Reads "Lots of Lakes" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:12:03
This is called "The Sea, Around Us".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:12:17
Reads "The Sea, Around Us" [from The Sea, Around Us].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:15:59
I want to read some, most of the poems from this section called "Book of Ayres", and I want to explain just a little bit about it if I can, I guess the most important thing to say is that they declared themselves as a book of poems, in the middle of a final exam, I was taking an exam and one of the things that we had to deal with was a poem by Emily Dickinson
, which I will read to you, it's a marvelous poem, I'd never seen it before. And it's so clearly tied all of the poems I'd been working on for the past year or so together, into a bundle, into a package. Let me read to you the, this little statement which I'd written for the publication of the book, and I, simply to insist that they are before anything else, religious poems, and I, as prepossessing as I am about them now, because I think that I may have occasion later on in the reading to call that, or you may have occasion to call that to mind. That they take, as their focus, the making, the finding of the flesh in the word, that is that the word is flesh and it has to be found as such. But let me just read this statement and then I'll read you the Emily Dickinson poem, we'll go right into the “Book of Ayres”. I hope that they're, also, that they're fun, and then you say 'religion', people say, 'uh-oh', this is going to be very grim and very heavy, and in the old sense of heavy. But I hope we can have fun with them, but simply, let me do this. All the poems in the “Book of Ayres” section Meat Air, were written with the intention, though not entirely conscious ‘til rather late in the series, of making the word flesh. That is, when the poet speaks, his words are physically only air, yet they can afford us the most sensorially tangible of experiences. Further, the poem, though merely air, is what sustains us, what the soul feeds on. The poet speaks to keep the soul of man alive, that's Yeats
in “John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore”, it's interesting that as I was grabbing for something to, for support, picked that line, because the line continues, or rather the whole passage goes "And oh, but she had stories, though not for the priest's ear, to keep the soul of man alive, to banish age and care, and being old, she put a skin on everything she said." Or as Williams
puts it, "It is difficult, to get the news from poems, yet we die, every day, for lack of what is found there." Yet if the word seeks to take on the actuality of flesh, of substance, substance itself, as the poet apprehends it, in the merest of tales of his life, from day to day, seeks to take on the resonating actuality of speech, to realize itself in the actuality of the word. Love itself is both a word and a continuing act or process, both an idea and a tension in the chest, viscera and genitals, a pressure toward articulation so complex that it often stifles speech. About halfway through “The Book of Ayres”, I realized that many of the poems I'd written over the past twelve years or so, had been attempting with various degrees of success to effect these transubstantiations and so, this collection. "The Dickinson Poem", which if you want to take a look at it is in Thomas Johnson's editions, it's number “1651”.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:20:02
Reads "Poem 1651" by Emily Dickinson.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:20:49
And one last note before starting in the book has an epigraph from Jim St. Jim. "I need to take a new tack, and sit on it." The first poem's called "’These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony’".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:21:11
Reads "’These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony’" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Unknown
00:21:20
Ambient Sound [bell].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:21:22
What the hell is that? I have this terrible recollection of this story I heard about a college in the Midwest in the United States
where a visiting prof came out to give a lecture on Plato
or something and had this bell go off every fifteen minutes and after, it really unnerved him, and after the end of the lecture, he asked one of the people, like, "What is that bell going off?" and the guy, the administrator said "Oh, that's to keep the students awake." I--If that's the case, God bless you, I hope we can do better than that.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:22:08
Reads "These Worlds Have Always Moved in Harmony".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:23:34
And this is called "The Sipapu". Don't worry about the title, it clears up.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:23:52
Reads "The Sipapu" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:27:51
This is called "Settling".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:27:58
Reads "Settling" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:29:48
This is called, this next poem is called "Paean" p-a-e-a-n, paean, and is a collaboration in a sense that it's the kind of poem in which a number of people get together and contribute lines, you give me three lines, and I'll give you two lines and eventually the poem gets written, and simply to give credit where credit where credit is due, to list the people who did contribute or help out in the writing of this poem, John Dryden
, William Carlos Williams, and the Associated Press
.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:30:31
Reads "Paean" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:12
The story goes that St. Cecilia
invented the organ, and when she was playing an angel passed and mistook earth for heaven because of this fantastic music. "Went to her organ vocal breath was given" says John Dryden. These are a couple of songs.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:38
Reads “Song” [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; third poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:48
This one also called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:32:54
Reads “Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; fourth poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:12
And this one also called "Song".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:18
Reads “Song" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; fifth poem entitled “Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:33:57
And this one called "Air".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:34:01
Reads "Air" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:34:59
And this one called "Goat Dance".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:35:07
Reads "Goat Dance" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; first poem entitled “Goat Dance” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:36:30
This one called "Two Airs".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:36:36
Reads "Two Airs" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:37:31
And another one called "Goat Dance".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:37:35
Reads "Goat Dance" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969; third poem entitled “Goat Song” published in “Book of Ayres” section].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:38:48
And this, title, may perhaps need a little bit of explanation. "The Romaunt of the Rose", a 13th century French dream vision poem, dream allegory, written actually in two halves by Jean de Meun
and Guillaume de Lorris
I'm not sure but Chaucer
translated the first part of it, and the title comes from his title, "The Romaunt of the Rose". The last line of the poem, “smoot right to the herte rote” is from Chaucer's translation and it's "smitten right to the heart's root". And the whole, the title of the poem is "The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:39:39
Reads "The Romaunt of the Rose Fuck" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:40:22
I'll just do two more, the first one called "K. 282". Koechel is--don't please, be insulted that I explain that title, I read the poem in New York
and a graduate student at Columbia
asked me if it meant "Circa 282", like circa 282, like approximately 282, and it is of course the catalogue number for the Mozart
piano sonata, and it's a piano sonata, I forget which, what key it's in.
Ron Loewinsohn
00:41:04
Reads "K. 282" [from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969].
Ron Loewinsohn
00:42:02
And the last poem is the title poem of the book, "Meat Air".
Ron Loewinsohn
00:42:08
Reads "Meat Air" from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969.
END
00:43:00
robert_hogg_i086-11-023.mp3 [File 2 of 2]
Robert Hogg
00:00:00
I'd like to open the reading with a poem that's really part of a verse-play that I wrote in 1963 or 64, a long time ago, a play that never really made it as a play, but fragments of which I've salvaged because I like, I like what they do. And so this is sort of called "Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play", and this is the dream that one of the figures has.
Robert Hogg
00:00:26
Reads "Fragments of an Imaginary Noh Play - Walkie's Dream".
Robert Hogg
00:02:39
I'd like to read a few selections from my book of poems The Connexions, which was printed in 1965. I'd like to begin with a poem entitled "The Command". I should just briefly mention that these poems were all written in a very short period of time between November and January, mostly, and a few poems written later on throughout that spring of 1965. That is, November 1964 through the early part of 1965. Most of them were written in New York and involved an experience I had there where I was very ill, and part of the time delirious. This poem was actually written a little later than some of the poems that follow. They're not spaced out chronologically in the book. "The Command".
Robert Hogg
00:03:34
Reads "The Command" from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:06:20
This poem, written, actually, previous to the other, is entitled "Eclipse", and it was written without my own, without my knowledge, actually, at the time, that there was an eclipse taking place. It was on the eighteenth of December, 1964, written in New York City. This was a lunar eclipse. Isn't there a lunar eclipse about to...is that tonight? [Audience laughter]. It's a full moon tonight. Something's happening.
Robert Hogg
00:07:06
Reads "Eclipse" from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:09:12
The she of that last stanza enters into this poem, which was originally entitled "The Changing of Skin". There's a good, considerable amount of snake imagery in these poems, all of which was the result of having hepatitis and the turning of colours. I had hepatitis rather badly, and relapsed twice with it, and each time I relapsed, of course, I turned bright yellow again. And it was quite an unusual experience, especially the first time, in which I was in the hospital, and the nurses, especially the young nurses, would come round and look at you with the most peculiar eyes, you know, as if you were really something from another world, having changed colour like that.
Robert Hogg
00:10:02
Reads unnamed poem [originally entitled “The Changing of Skin”].
Robert Hogg
00:14:08
Another poem connected with this quite closely, another dream poem, entitled "The Cave".
Robert Hogg
00:14:17
Reads "The Cave".
Robert Hogg
00:15:36
After this there's a descent, a further descent down, as has been instructed in an earlier poem, called "The Command," and then a coming-out again. And then a poem that remembers, really, it's quite different, I'm not sure how much this poem really belonged in The Connexions. Most of the poems definitely did belong in the book, I think, though some of them don't bear reading, I don't think, now. This poem bears reading, I think, but doesn't really belong in the book. How's that?
Robert Hogg
00:16:09
Reads unnamed poem from The Connexions.
Robert Hogg
00:16:55
And another poem, which was originally titled, "Poem to Out of This World and Soul Lies", was really written with John Sinclair
in mind, whom I hope all of you keep in mind at times, specially now that he's in prison, in Michigan
. It was written to...not written really for him, but written with him in mind, listening to the record "Out of This World and Soul Lies" by John Coltrane
.
Robert Hogg
00:17:23
Reads ["Out of This World" , originally entitled “Poem to Out of This World and Soul Lies”].
Robert Hogg
00:19:09
And the last poem in the collection is entitled, simply, "Song".
Robert Hogg
00:19:16
Reads "Song" from The Connexions.
Unknown
00:19:33
Ambient Sound [bell].
Robert Hogg
00:19:34
Have to change my trunks...Now I'd like to read a few poems that were written not too far removed from the time of The Connexions, some of them, and then moving right on up to the present. This poem titled simply, "Once" and the "once" is really part of the poem.
Robert Hogg
00:20:01
Reads "Once" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:20:24
And another little poem called "Tropos", which means, "to turn" in Greek, or "turning" in Greek.
Robert Hogg
00:20:34
Reads "Tropos".
Robert Hogg
00:20:50
Another short poem, written some time later, but in the same vein. "A Fragment of Love".
Robert Hogg
00:20:57
Reads "A Fragment of Love".
Robert Hogg
00:21:12
This poem was written about four or five years ago also, and was written after having given a tarot reading for a friend. And I take it that most of you will have some familiarity with the tarot cards, and anyway, the poem attempts in several places to explain, in other places just simply to give you the reading of the tarot as it was done out. And so I've just simply in parts just listed the cards that fell. It's simply called "A Reading".
Robert Hogg
00:21:48
Reads "A Reading".
Robert Hogg
00:24:03
And now, a longer poem, a poem that really, in a sense, deals with the subject of poetry, and the subject of love, together. The poem is entitled "Aries and Pisces Dream". And really, I supposed, ought to be dedicated to Charles Olson
.
Robert Hogg
00:24:30
Reads "Aries and Pisces Dream" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:29:03
A short, and rather lyrical poem, which was written in response to a letter, not in very good response to a letter, actually...in which the other person asked me if I wouldn't tell them about Psyche
, what I've defined psyche, which I found was an absolutely impossible thing to do, and something that I hope I can--you could--you know, once you spend one's whole life, I suppose, trying to do it, God help you if you actually get it done, you know. There'd be nothing left to do. This poem is called "Of Psyche".
Robert Hogg
00:29:39
Reads "Of Psyche" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:30:26
A recent poem, entitled "To the Moon". The moon gets into a lot of my poems, one way or another. This one woke us up the other night, rather nastily.
Robert Hogg
00:30:37
Reads "To the Moon".
Robert Hogg
00:31:12
This is an untitled poem, a happy poem, I hope, written in September, on the seventh of September, and it struck me, as it was the seventh of September, that in fact, in the Latin, that September is the seventh month, and was apparently the seventh month of the Roman calendar year. And so I was suddenly taken by that, because, you know, if you write dates very often, you probably use the typical numerical method of you know, putting, the day, and the month, and the year, in terms of numbers. And you usually think of September as the ninth month, which in fact it is, in our calendar, but the word is obviously, suggests, as October suggests the eighth month, September is the seventh. And so I was happy. It seemed like something new was happening. It was nice, because you know, in September, in northern, any part of Ottawa
, Ottawa-area, or Ontario
, or Quebec
, you know what's coming, eh? You know, it's still here. So you got to be happy while you can. And it was also, I should add, that even in old times, you know, the calendar year was divided into twelve months, and so the seventh month would, in a sense, be the beginning of a new cycle. It would be six months, and that would end the first half, and there would be six more months, and September would be the first of it again. And that also excited me. It felt like Spring. [Laughter]. But I'm crazy.
Robert Hogg
00:32:42
Reads untitled poem [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:33:05
And now a sad poem, for someone who has, who had cancer, and is apparently alright, which is kind of nice. I think I was pessimistic, I'm always terribly pessimistic about something like that, I don't find it easy to be optimistic in such situations, and optimism, the optimism that I now have again for this person is only as qualified, I dare say. The poem is entitled "A Lifetime", and the more I thought about that word--I didn't get the title easily, I had to work it out--and the more I thought about that word, the more it began to mean to me. I think if you really think about that word, lifetime, as one word, it's very peculiar. And then I thought, I was thinking about time-life [audience laughter]. And that really, that was really funny. It's strange, isn't it, that those, that, that corporation should own those two words, as they do. It's very difficult to use them. We can't just call it--like, can you imagine putting out a magazine called Life? You know. Or Poetry magazine. These are very good names for a magazine. Or Time, you know. That's pretty big stuff! [Audience laughter]. What could they--and look what they've done with it, you know. So reduction is still possible [Laughter]. "A Lifetime"...And one other thing [laughter] before I begin this one, it's not altogether this way, you've probably, you know, you've probably found that my lines, my poetry, has a tendency, especially in the earlier poems, to be, like they say, poetic, you know, to try to be a little, to try to sound pretty. It was something that meant a great deal to me earlier, and means a little less to me now than it did then, though beauty still means as much to me as ever. I have tried, I have looked for in my poetry--and one thing, it was very pleasant hearing Ron's
poems tonight, is a quality of voice, a quality of language, that doesn't necessarily try to be pretty at all--that tries to use the language that we are actually living with. I don't mean to try to talk about the old problems of prose and poetry, or anything of the kind. But just that, language needn't necessarily be quote, poetic, unquote. We had kind of a talk about that last night, at the reading in Ottawa, it was pretty funny. And this poem, just at least its beginning, it has that colloquialism that I enjoy.
Robert Hogg
00:35:37
Reads "A Lifetime".
Robert Hogg
00:37:03
And the last poem that I'd like to read is a poem that is really a freak poem. This poem has taken me at least two years to write, a little longer than two years to write, I think, and has been written over and over and over and over again, and like I said about time/life, this one has also suffered a phenomenal reduction, starting out as about six pages and ending up as three, which is usually a good sign. Originally there was a line in the poem, something about the presages of civilization, you know, are on my back or in my ear, or something like that, and it was a horrible line. Like a lot of the other lines it had to be excised, and rewritten, and so forth. But the thought of it, the thought of that word, the meaning of that word, contained, lived with me, and lived with my sense of the poem. And so I've entitled it simply, "Presages". And also, to make it a little more comprehensible, I've put a sort of bracket, subtitle, "From a Sixth-Floor Apartment". Actually, the poem was begun in Manhattan
, not in Manhattan, I'm sorry, in Queens
, New York, when I was staying at my in-laws' house a little over two years ago, just briefly, and was written from their sixth-floor apartment. It actually, the strange thing about this poem is it was mostly written since then, really re-written, although the first part is pretty much as it was originally.
Robert Hogg
00:38:24
Reads "Presages: From a Sixth-Floor Apartment" [published later in Standing Back].
Robert Hogg
00:40:40
Thank you.
END
00:40:42
[Cut off abruptly].
Notes:
Ron Loewinsohn reads from Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970). Robert Hogg reads from The Connexions (Oyez Press, 1966), as well as poems later published in Standing Back (Coach House Press, 1972), and others from unknown sources.
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
In 1970, Ron Loewinsohn was teaching at the University of Berkeley (perhaps he only started in the Fall semester?), Meat Air was published in the same year and he finished his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1971.
In 1970, Robert Hogg was a professor of Modern Poetry at Carleton University and was most likely working on publishing Standing back (Coach House Press, 1971) and Robert Duncan: An Interview by George Bowering and Robert Hogg (Coach House Press, 1971).
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
Direct connections from Loewinsohn to Montreal or Sir George Williams University are unknown, however, Loewinsohn was a heavy-hitter in the American poetry ring, befriending many members of the San Francisco Renaissance, Black Mountain and Beat groups.
Robert Hogg met George Bowering (a SGWU Poetry Committee Member) in the 60’s in Vancouver, and became involved in the Tish group.
Type:
Preservation
Note:
2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction andedits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Gray, Richard. "Loewinsohn, Ron(ald William)". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.
Citation:
Hogg, Robert. The Connexions. Berkeley: Oyez, 1966.
Citation:
Hogg, Robert. Standing Back. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1971.
Citation:
Hogg, Robert & George Bowering. Robert Duncan: an interview by George Bowering & Robert Hogg. Montreal: A Beaver Kosmos Folio, 1971.
Citation:
Loewinsohn, Ron. Meat Air: Poems 1957-1969. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970.
Citation:
“Robert Hogg”. Talonbooks website: Vancouver, B.C..
Citation:
“Loewinsohn, Ron”. Literature Online Biography. Proquest, 2009.
Citation:
“Research, Teaching and Professional Awards: Marston Lafrance Research Fellow (2004-2005)”. Carleton NOW, Carleton University: May 3, 2004.
Citation:
“Robert Hogg”. ECW Press website, Biographies: Toronto, Ontario.
Citation:
“Robert Hogg, Mountain Path Flours”. Eco Farm Day 2010: Canadian Organic Growers/ Cultivons Biologique Canada, Speakers.
Citation:
"Ron(ald) (William) Loewinsohn." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001.